I have a 15g planted tank receiving sunlight for nearly 8 hrs. in a day.
Plants are just exploding with growth. It is a low tech tank, no additional Co2, no fertilizers .
It has mollies, platies, swordtails.
As summers are approaching, I might have to move the tank to prevent overheating.
Will I have same growth with two CFL of 20w each?
One problem with sunlight is that like terrestial plants they are tiliting towards sunlight.
To overcome this I simply rotate the tank with stand every two months
Any other ideas

It has a simple sponge filter driven by a small airpump. It is adjusted at a very low rate so that water circulation is maintained

pandian wrote:

what substratum used?

It has two layers of substrate. Lower one is seived "morang" which is used in construction about 2 inches and top layer is bigger particles of same sand so that water is not cloudy

pandian wrote:

was your tank visited by direct sun light or indirect sunlight through window or any thing else....

The tank is placed in front of a full glass window which is on a east -west axis. It receives first rays from sunrise and direct sunlight from 6am to 2pm and indirect sunlight till sunset.
I think this is the key for good plant growth. After all planted lights try to imitate spectrum of sun, so why not use original if available.
In my opinion some amount of either direct or indirect sunlight is essential for plants.
The second observation is till the time tank was lightly populated plant growth was just so-so. Since the day I have nearly overstocked it the palnts are growing like crazy. At present it has 15 pairs of mollies, platies, swordtails.
I have not lost a single fish in this tank. The way my mollies are breeding I might have to vacate my house for them.

pandian wrote:

i am having a empty 3*1.25*1.5 feet tank and planning to have a planted tank with out any artifical co2 addition......

I had lots of algae problem too...I live in a flat and intended to setup a few new tanks outside in my balcony since i have lots of space.On trial basis i moved one of my existing tanks to see how it goes. The tank would get green from all sides of the glass.It took me no more than 4 weeks to realise that the tank was better to be kept inside the house.Have only 2 tanks inside the house due to the lack of space but am glad that i dint setup any outside else i would spend half my week scrubbing the sides of the glass

With so much sunlight don't you have a problem with algae? I had a tank in the sunlght once and I had to move it due to algae problem

Elaine

Hi Eliane
I have a small pleco in the tank which eats away everything.
My mollies take care of the rest.
Hair algae comes in a while, I just throw it away.
The only problem I am facing is plants growing sideways

What we are missing here is that Sandeep does not add any fertilisers to his tank, any planted tank which has iron dosed in it will bloom with algae if exposed to direct sunlight. If you want to expose it to direct sunlight try not dosing any Iron and then try it, it should work.

What we are missing here is that Sandeep does not add any fertilisers to his tank, any planted tank which has iron dosed in it will bloom with algae if exposed to direct sunlight. If you want to expose it to direct sunlight try not dosing any Iron and then try it, it should work.

Nikhil

I agree with nikhil, Algae are microscopic "plants". they also grow by photosynthesis and nutrients.
Whenever in a tank there is a surplus of either light or nutrients algae will grow.
In a unplanted tank where there are no plants to absorb nutrients, placing a tank in sunlight will be a disaster.
Even in a lightly planted tank, more light will cause algae to come.
This is also evident when I prune the plants too much, the greenry lessens and algae can be seen in the tank.

I am late here but this is indeed valuable information for me. Since I am starting out a planted tank which I propose to setup on a partition wall which has plenty of sunlight coming in from behind curtains, I might just have to limit the amount of light I have to use artificially to control algae.

Or I might have to put up some black paper on the windows to reduce light !!!

I have finally solved the problem of plants growing sideways in this tank.
As posted earlier I have put CFL of 20w each.
Now as plants are getting light from top, they are getting straight.
This is now getting to be very soothing sight to the eyes.
There is no comparison of sunlight to anything.

Hi Shahji
I have researched a lot after I started this thread and I think I know the reason why I do not have algae problem in my tank even though it receives a lot of sunlight.
In aquarium plants there are plants which are slow growing and some are fast growing. If in a planted tank you have only slow growing plants then the excess sunlight & nutrients will fuel algae. However if one has a mix of slow growing & fast growing plants then the fast growing plants will pull nutrients and not allow algae to grow.
In this I have cabomba & vallesneria which are very fast growing, hence they have not given space to algae.
Rest of the plants amazon sword, ludwiga have now taken up well.
However when we mix plants "alleopathy" also comes into play and some plants might not grow well.
You will have to do your own permutations & combinations.

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